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Caarth
The Caarth are a powerful and evil race of snake-headed humanoids who live in deserts. pp. 86-9 Creation and Early Years The Caarth are the oldest and dominant race of the varied species that make up the Snake People. They were created a millennium ago by the Demon Prince Sith, who blended large numbers of Humans and Snakes together in a vast spawning vat, eventually producing S'hghkull and H'ssghkull. These two entities quickly produced several dozen offspring, that Sith immediately secreted in the hottest parts of what would one day be the Desert of Skulls and the Scythera Desert, leaving them to thrive. Because of the difficulty in surviving an encounter with the Caarth, they have been subject to numerous myths and misconceptions. Past writers of bestiaries and legends have called them "bald, snake-tailed monstrosities", yet they are closer in form to snake-headed Humans. The typical Caarth stands at between two and two-and-a-half metres in height and has smooth, hairless skin of golden hue. They have claws instead of fingernails, yet suffer no loss of Human dexterity for this, and a pair of fixed fangs at the forefront of their mouths. It is unknown whether Caarth are poisonous or not, though scholars who make a study of such things suggest that their anatomy doesn't lend itself towards being venomous. Caarth in Modern Times The Snake-Mutations The Caarth see themselves as the highest form of life on Titan, and strive unceasingly for the continuation of their creator's work. This has resulted in a number of horrific aberrations and mutations being spawned and then abandoned to the desert, possibly including the Gretch. However, greater success has been enjoyed with the Kassistra, Justrali and Xen-Vipers, all of these disturbing blends of man and serpent, and serving the Caarth in the ways best suited to them. Forbidden Knowledge Despite their species' youth, relative to such ancients as Humans or Elves, the Caarth have amassed a great deal of knowledge extremely rapidly; excavating desert cities and using hypnosis, torture and mind-weakening concoctions on captured prisoners in an unmatched search for learning. Their skill with poison has no equal, and they know all that there is to know about them. Caarth weapons and tools are invariably coated with some kind of venom, be it to kill or drive an enemy mad, or to make his body break out into scales in preparation for some new ghastly experiment. As a result of this poison coating, a Caarth or Justrali weapon is invariably fatal, even if it only grazes an opponent. - 200/?? Furthermore, they have great knowledge concerning mutations and interbreeding, for whilst they themselves appear to lack the mutating curse of Chaos, they have been utilising necromantic and transformational magic for centuries in an attempt to reshape prisoners' bodies so that their ancient rulers can be resurrected within them, as well as creating many other beings to serve them or even by mere accident. Perhaps the most famous (or infamous) of these is the notorious Serpent Queen of Port Blacksand. - pgs. 101-102 Caarth sorcerers also perform archaeological digs on desert ruins in order to discover lost magical knowledge. The Caarth recently sent agents to investigate the tomb of the evil Pharaoh Akharis in the southwest of the Desert of Skulls. - para 307 Caarth have observatories with enormous telescopes, with which they use to map out the universe. It is widely believed that the Caarth have discovered other planets in Titan's star system, something human scholars suspect but have not been able to prove so far. The Constraints of the Snake People Because the Caarth and most of their creations are cold-blooded, they cannot survive outside of the Desert of Skulls or the Scythera Desert for long. It is this alone that has kept their actions so restricted, and their numbers few. However, some elementalists believe that the Caarth are beginning to utilise magic powerful enough to cause the deserts themselves to spread, overriding natural law. Even if this is not the case, the physical power and raw intelligence of individual Caarth make them more than a match for almost any other opponent, and certainly the Lizard Men, whose great Empire is already beginning to encroach upon that of the Caarth. Several battles have already broken out between Lizard Men and Caarth armies in the Snakelands, as each side tries to annex the region. - p.150 The Caarth control their empire from their three great cities - their capital S'hchtiss (Jewelled Oasis of Sighing Worship), K'rrstal (Heart of Glimmering Stone), and S'turrak (Cool Providence of Shadows). There are also about a dozen small fortifications situated in a wide ellipse around these citadels, each housing a garrison of Caarth and Justrali warriors and little else. - 197/??; - ???; - ???; - ??? See Also References Category:Other Races-Races Category:Other Races